The Stannex

Okay, it’s not really much of a trip, seeing as the convention hotel is less than 10 miles from my apartment … but still, I’ll be spending a lot of time at NorWesCon 35 this weekend. If you’re in the greater Seattle area, you’re a science-fiction/fantasy fan, I expect to see you at the show!

I’ve got a relatively busy itinerary on Friday and Saturday, so in case you’re looking for me (or just looking for something interesting to do), here’s my schedule:

FRIDAY

4:00–5:00 pm: Freelancing 101 — One of the best, sure-fire ways of writing for the gaming industry is by doing freelance work. Great! But…how does one do that? What are the benefits and drawbacks to freelancing? Our panel of freelancers (and the people who hire them), will share their stories, and give advice on how to be a successful freelancer for the gaming industry. (Room: Cascade 7)

6:00–7:00: Have Licenses Taken Over Creativity In Gaming?—RPG companies used to spawn settings like Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms, but now they just license Dresden Files or Marvel. There have been few or original settings since Eberron and Eclipse Phase. What’s gone wrong with RPG publishing? (Room: Evergreen 3&4)

9:00–9:30 pm: Reading — The event listing says I’ll be reading “Unusual Suspects,” but that isn’t going to happen (I can explain why at the reading). Either I’ll be talking about Unusual Suspects, or I’ll be reading Ekhar Lorent: Gnome Detective, whichever the audience prefers. (Room: Cascade 1)

SATURDAY

10:00–11:00 am: Webcomics —Are they replacing newspaper comics as the preferred daily or weekly comic strip? How does this sort of continuation differ from recurring monthly comics? Write for the web, or with the intent to print? What are some of the challenges and limitations for creating web comics? (Room: Cascade 6)

11:00 am–Noon: The Writer/Editor Relationship — An editor is interested in your story. Hurray! But he wants big changes. Boo! Now what do you do? Find out what goes on behind the scenes and how you as a writer can increase your chances of closing a sale.

3:00–4:00 pm: Autograph Session — I’ll be at one of the tables in the big signing room, trying to stay out of the way of the people folks REALLY want to meet. But I might have some freebies to give away to interested folks who stop and talk to me!

7:00–8:00 pm: *POW* Breaking Into Comics — How hard is it to get work in the field? Is it easier working as an individual or for a publishing company? All the insider advice you could want, including how to start your own publishing company, publishing tips and tricks, art tools, collaboration advice, self-promotion and a whole lot more.

In between all those events I may be in the bar shmoozing with anyone who’ll buy me a Diet Coke, or I might hunker down in a quiet corner (if I can find one) to do a little work. (Unfortunately, I have deadlines next week.)

If you’re going to be at the show, stop by and say hi!

You may recall that back in the first few weeks of the year, I spent a lot of time dealing with the Great Wall of Boxes in hopes of reducing the amount of junk I’m storing but ALSO letting me get about actually DECORATING the apartment I’d recently moved into. Well, here we are two months later and little movement has been made. There are a few reasons for that, chief among them that I’ve been very busy with freelance work in my “off hours,” but a close second being that I really wasn’t sure what the next step was.

It’s not that I didn’t know what I need. I can easily list off the items that are required to make this space feel like a home — a couch, more bookcases (so I can get all of my reduced library up and organized and available), a TV, a TV stand, a coffee table … and that’s just in the living room (don’t even get me started about what I need for the bedroom)!

The problem was (and is) that there’s an intricate puzzle of prerequisites, physical obstacles, and practical inter-relations that has to be solved in order to know what can and should be done. I needed to sort through the boxes and get them out of the apartment before I could know how much material I’d have left. Once done, I had to find furniture that suited both the job AND my sense of aesthetics. Then I had to acquire the items in an order that allowed me to progress. (For example, having a TV before I had a TV stand would only make things more inconvenient, as would getting a couch before I cleared out a couch-shaped space in the room.)

It was like a real-life slide puzzle, and I was just STUCK!

This week I started making progress again and, indeed, made a great leap forward when I found a couch I actually liked AND was reasonably priced (the former was actually much more difficult than the latter). The reality that a couch was on its way spurred me forward to make more progress, shifting many of the remaining boxes from the back corner of the apartment to the front and creating a roughly couch-shaped space that won’t block my motion through the apartment once it’s filled with an actual couch.

Great!

So now I’m starting to think about the next logical step, which is to acquire the bookcases. However, the space that they are going to take up is the area where I just moved the boxes to. So I’ve got to move them AGAIN to free that up. But in order to do that, I need to move the items that are currently in that space (ironically enough, that is a different pair of bookcases that are currently filled with games and graphic novels respectively). The spot they need to go to is currently filled with a wire-frame set of shelves that are holding many of the books that will go on the new bookcases once they arrive … so they really have nowhere else to go right now. And so an impasse is reached.

Making this even more challenging is that SOME of the shuffling about really calls for two people to do the moving (at least for convenience’s sake) and, the last time I checked, I still was only just one person … so the difficulty level of many of the steps is increased significantly. Meanwhile, OTHER tasks are just time consuming. For instance, I’ve decided to take all of my CDs and DVDs (and I have a significant number of both) out of their bulky cases and store them JUST in paper sleeves. This will be a big help overall, but in order to do that right I have to not just drop discs into sleeves, I have to label the sleeves themselves so that I can FIND my music and movies again when I want to.

Be all that as it may, I feel like I’m actually making progress. If I can manage to get out during this week and purchase some bookcases (and arrange for delivery over the coming weekend), I’ll be able to make another significant stride along my path to domestication.

It is feasible (though not necessarily likely) that I could actually have everything done, delivered, set up, and organized the way I want before the end of April. That is, if I’ve actually gotten the slide-puzzle’s solution correct. If not, I’m going to end up backed into a corner with more furniture than I have current room for … and I’ll have to start the slide puzzle over again.

While watching In Search of Steve Ditko, one thing struck me in a very personal way. It was the part of the interview with Stan Lee in Part 6 where the discussion of credit comes up.

Over the years, there has been a lot of grief thrown Stan’s way about taking sole credit as the “creator” of most of the characters and titles in the Marvel Universe. It has been said that he’s denied people like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, and many others what they were due. And, while the BIG problem really is that Marvel the COMPANY considers all the material to be “work for hire” and so the COMPANY is the only one that makes money off the movies, video games, and international licensing deals … Stan’s bombastic self-promotion made a much easier target for fans’ ire.

The funny thing is, I’ve never heard Stan ever deny the importance of the artists, or whitewash their collaborative efforts. (And I’ve heard and read A LOT of interviews with Stan over the years.) It’s just that, when push comes to shove, he still says that HE is the creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and all the others.

I never really was able to reconcile that conflict — the fact that he freely praised his collaborators, but insisted on sole credit as “creator” — until I watched the Ditko documentary. In it, Jonathan Ross pokes at the issue (kindly, politely … but he’s definitely poking) trying to get behind Stan’s thinking, and eventually he gets there.

In brief (and you really should go back to that link and watch the interview yourself), Stan says that he believes that the guy who came up with the idea is the one who “created” the character. First there was nothing, then the guy with the idea has SOMETHING — that’s creation. Of course, he needs the artists to turn that “something” into what you see in the comic, but his perspective is that at that point, they’re working on something that’s already been created … they’re working to interpret it.

He ALSO says, quite passionately, that Steve Ditko did so much GREAT work that he deserves to be called the co-creator … and that Stan considers him to be the co-creator … but if push comes to shove, Stan still BELIEVES that he himself is the creator.

And the weird thing is, I see where he’s coming from. In fact, I very often fall into that trap when I talk about JIGG (the gamers network that I co-created while I was in Japan). When talking about JIGG, I will often refer to it as the group that “I created.” In fact, I did that a few months ago, and my thought process was pretty much the same as Stan Lee’s seems to be: I thought up JIGG, I created the idea, and the acronym, and gave the very first push that got the ball rolling. Therefore, when I talk about it, I’ll STILL sometimes say “I created JIGG.” All this despite the fact that, it would NEVER have gone anywhere without the efforts of Kevin Burns (who had created his own similar network and decided that joining forces to make one BIG group was the best course of action, selflessly adding the time, money, and effort he’d already invested to support our burgeoning new enterprise) and Mike Montesa (who took the idea of JIGG and breathed life into it by tirelessly promoting it among the Tokyo area gamers) and a bunch of other fine, giving, hard working folks who ARE the co-creators of JIGG.

When I say that I created the organization, I in NO WAY am trying to take credit away from anyone. I’m not even trying to aggrandize myself. I’m just remembering the moment when there was no JIGG, and then I thought of it — the name, mostly — and there it was. I created that. And so, when talking casually, I am STILL apt to say that “I created JIGG,” because THAT’S what I’m thinking about.

Of course, I realize that this demeans the work my friends did … so I TRY to remember to say “co-created” whenever I’m talking publicly. Because it’s fair and true. When we’re talking about the actual organization and everything it’s been over the past 20 years, my little moment of conceptualization is NOTHING compared to the actual hours of WORK the we ALL put in to make JIGG real … and that many people are STILL putting in to keep it a thriving organization.

Maybe that’s the big difference between Stan Lee and me (at least in this arena). He seems to be willing to concede that the artists “deserve to be called” co-creators even though they aren’t (in his mind, anyway). Where as I think my collaborators ARE co-creators, even though I still sometimes forget to say it.

It’s a double holiday today … one Mathematic, the other Japanese!

HAPPY PI DAY!

Today it March 14th, a day many people (at least here in the States) notate as 3/14 or 3.14 … which just happens to be the first three numerals in the famous mathematical constant of the ratio between a circle’s circumference to its diameter (3.14159265…) — a number known as “pi” … which rhymes with PIE!!!!

Someone (a guy named Larry Shaw, apparently) linked this crazy set of relationships up in 1988 and Pi Day was born! The traditional way of celebrating? Why, eating PIE of course!

Really, do you NEED to know any more?

I’ve just given you a perfectly cromulent reason to stuff your face full of your favorite pie. Stop being so analytical and go celebrate!

HAPPY WHITE DAY!

Today is March 14th, exactly one month AFTER February 14th which is a traditional Japanese holiday called Valentine’s Day (you may have heard of it). Well, in Japan, Valentine’s Day is the day when women give gifts (mostly of chocolate) to men … no, really, I’m not making this up. White Day is the day, one month later, when the men are supposed to return this debt of gratitude and give chocolates to women … but they usually forget.

One of my favorite stories about my time in Japan centers around White Day … and if you see me today and ask about it, I’ll gladly tell you the whole thing.

Right after I’m done eating my pie.

A few years ago, Hyrum told me about this thing he’d read about called a “No-Lose Lottery.” Now, just by the name alone, I was suspicious, but he’d told me some crazy things before that turned out to be true, so I listened. It turned out he was talking about a financial product generally known as a PLS or a Prize-Linked Savings Account.

A PLS works roughly like this: You deposit money in a PLS account at your local bank. It’s basically like any other savings account, only the interest rate you get is below the going market rate. Then at the end of the month, everyone who has money in a PLS account in that bank is entered into a drawing for cash prizes (the cash taken from what the bank has earned with the money it DIDN’T pay in interest). So it’s kind of like a lottery, except you get to KEEP the money you put into your PLS account (and have access to it at any time, just the way you would with an ordinary savings account).

What kind of prize money are we talking about? Well, it would depend on the particular financial institution you got a PLS with, but the numbers most often thrown around are a single $100,000 winner, along with several $50,000 winners, a few more $25,000 winners, and so on down, perhaps, to a low of a “mere” $1,000 dollars for the lowest level winner. And you get to keep the money in your account. AND the same thing happens again every month.

So you get all the fun of a wildly popular form of legalized gambling (that happens to have the most insanely BAD odds you can possibly imagine), but at the end of the day you are GUARANTEED to get back the amount that you “spent” on tickets.

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“They’ve been deemed illegal in most states and many other countries?” he said.

“But WHY?” I asked, but then it came to me. “Oh, because the STATE makes all the money off the lottery now. If people started taking the money they were throwing at scratch-off and mega-million-power-ball tickets and putting it into savings accounts, the States would lose a major revenue stream!”

And that turned out to be just the case.

I told Hyrum that if he ever heard about a legal PLS to let me know, because I’d sign up in an instant. I almost never play the lottery. (Maybe once a year or so, just for the fun of imagining what I’d do if I actually DID win all that money.) But in an era when you’re lucky to get much more than a 1% yield on most savings accounts, finding one where there is a monthly chance to just “win” $100k AND I get to keep my money?!?

Sign me up!

Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be happening about changing the illegality of this type of financial product … and it was nowhere in the interest of most states to move quickly of their own accounts. So the topic just drifted into the ether.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was listening to an episode of Freakanomics Radio and they devoted almost an entire show to PLSes and how they actually were being decriminalized in some states. If you’ve got about 40 minutes, I HIGHLY suggest giving it a listen.

The thing is, Washington is one of the states that was moving to make it legal (for a Credit Union, at least) to offer PLS accounts to their members. And, in fact, that law was SIGNED by Gov. Gregoire in May of 2011, giving Washington State Credit Unions the right to begin offering PLS accounts as of September 2011.

And yet, here we are six months beyond that date and (as near as I can tell) NONE of the local credit unions have offered any kind of PLS product.

It boggles my mind.

I’m going to take some time this spring and visit the various credit unions around the greater Seattle area. There are plenty of them. And I’m going to ask each one if they offer, or have any plans to offer, a PLS account … and if they say no, I’m going to ask why.

Truthfully, I’m kind of expecting most of the customer service people to have no idea what I’m talking about … so I’m going to be ready to explain it to them. Then I’m going to ask them WHY their credit union ISN’T offering this product.

And if I luck out and find one or more reputable credit unions that DO offer PLS accounts? Well, at least one of them is getting the money that is currently sitting into the savings account at my big, nationally-recognized, brand name bank … and all the money I WOULD have deposited there in the coming months.

Anyway, check out Prize-Linked Savings accounts. Listen to that Freakanomics Radio show, or just do some digging online. It’s an insanely great idea, and one that more people need to know about.